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Posted on August 6th, 2009 by Barry Collins
Our very own Windows 7 chkdsk bug
Microsoft’s Steven Sinofksy was right to elegantly demolish rumours that an error with Windows 7’s Check Disk facility could derail the launch of the operating system.
However, chkdsk has been causing a fair bit of irritation in the PC Pro office since long before this particular molehill was Googled into a mountain.
So far, it’s only affected myself and fellow newshound Stuart Turton, but practically every time we boot our Windows 7 RC machines, chkdsk kicks into action. That gives us precisely ten seconds to remember to press a key to cancel the process, or sit there for a couple of minutes while chkdsk diligently scans our drives and reports… no problem whatsoever.
Has anyone else seen this bug? If not, we’re launching a full-scale investigation into why Microsoft’s trying to monkey with the PC Pro news team.
Tags: Check Disk, chkdsk, Windows 7
Posted in: Windows 7
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37 Responses to “ Our very own Windows 7 chkdsk bug ”
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Authors
- Barry Collins
- Chris Brennan
- Christine Horton
- Darien Graham-Smith
- Dave Stevenson
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- Jon Honeyball
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August 6th, 2009 at 9:21 am
You mean you haven’t Googled for something like “prevent chkdsk boot” to find the way of resetting the ‘dirty bit’?
Shame on you!
August 6th, 2009 at 9:31 am
John – what is this Google you speak of?
Seriously, we know there are workarounds. Just trying to find out if this is a widespread problem.
Thanks
Barry
August 6th, 2009 at 9:36 am
Yep – I’ve had that problem all along with RC1 – may even have had it with the beta though I can’t remember. Thought it might be something to do with my hardware but obviously not … Are you suggesting it hasn’t been fixed in the final version?
August 6th, 2009 at 9:40 am
Had the same problem. Everytime I started Windows 7 RC I had a pop up saying there was some corruption on the disk and then I restarted chek disk would run. Was forced to do a reformat and clean install od windows 7. So far the problem has not occured again
August 6th, 2009 at 9:59 am
I also had the problem on the beta. I reformatted and did a clean install of Windows 7 RC, and it appeared again regardless. The other weird thing is that it occurs on all three of my machines: my Dell XPS 1330 laptop, my Shuttle Glamor work PC, and my monstrous gaming desktop. I can’t find a common factor, beyond Windows 7.
August 6th, 2009 at 10:35 am
Never had or seen this “bug” on any of my PC’s / laptops, running either the beta or RC1
August 11th, 2009 at 2:43 pm
Hi I also have seen this issue. I have windows 7 running as a dual boot with good old trusty XP. It does not always come up though. Not sure if this is to do with the dual boot though?
August 11th, 2009 at 4:09 pm
Yes, I reckon I came across this once and when I tried to reformat the hard disk, I saw that somehow it had shrunk from 320gb to 250gb. Though I stupidly did not pay too much notice to the specifics of the message and hurriedly installed over Vista as it was driving me mad. Now I know that I will no doubt need to buy a new hard disk later and re-install my XP and Fedora on that, but I’m willing to give Win7 a chance till it expires anyway.
August 11th, 2009 at 8:57 pm
With the development of Windows 7 Microsoft seem to have taken every precaution and got users involved early with a very long beta process and almost feature complete version of the OS being made available to all. But it looks like that wasn’t enough to stop at least one critical bug slipping through the net and making it into the final build we will be buying on October 22nd.
The bug is with the utility CHKDSK which is used to display file system integrity information and attempt to repair damage with the /R parameter. It’s that /R option that seems to be causing the problem in Windows 7 with the result meaning a blue screen of death (BSOD). Windows Vista using the /R parameter sees CHKDSK attempt to carry out its repair functionality and uses around 10MB of RAM. Running the same command on Windows 7 sees the amount of RAM used continue to tick up to the point where it has eaten all available RAM, runs out, and crashes the machine. It doesn’t matter how much RAM you have it will eventually use it all. The problem also occurs on both 32-bit and 64-bit versions of the OS. InfoWorld has also confirmed the same problem happens when running the disk check utility in Windows Explorer.
It’s unclear why this is happening in such a well-known utility, but the suspicion is currently falling on the updated NTFS driver stack used for Windows 7.
August 12th, 2009 at 11:38 am
Hi there!
My machine also runs into this problem (with the German version).
chkdsk finds no errors after all, every time. Quite annoying … 
I have read that a preformated partionen causes the problem, when Win 7 is installed on that. It is suggested to delete the partion completely and reinstall Win on that on.
I just find that curios, because that behaviour did not happen from the very beginning, but since one or two weeks now.
September 3rd, 2009 at 12:43 pm
The only time I’ve encountered CHKDSK was when I used Linux Ubuntu 9.04 to transfer files from the Ubuntu partition to my Windows 7 and XP partitions. XP consistently keeps wanting to run a CHKDSK upon startup, but Windows 7, on both Beta and RC, have not done anything different. I’m curious to know of this CHKDSK bug. (my system is a triple boot of XP, 7, and Ubuntu 9.04)
September 8th, 2009 at 6:44 pm
Same problem here and it’s just so f-ing random and irritating.
September 9th, 2009 at 11:56 am
Yes, same issue with Italian Professional version from MSDN. Really annoying.
September 17th, 2009 at 11:37 am
Have had the same problem on three Dell Studio XPS 16. Stopped chkdsk using chkntfs /x c: command in command prompt from running at startup to get rid of it, though that isn’t really a solution. Any news?
September 18th, 2009 at 12:01 pm
Same here with the release version of WIN7 64X on Dell M1530. just had a new HD shipped over from Dell, un-formatted and same problem again! there is definitely an issue with Win7!
September 25th, 2009 at 9:13 am
I’ve the same problem with RC1 FRENCH – Motherboard ASUS P5QL-SE – 4Gb RAM -
HD Sata Maxtor STM3320613AS.
Chkdsk si popping up every 4 or 5 starts.
September 27th, 2009 at 9:07 am
The problems for me started after trying to use some partition programs that support win7. they said that c: is in use by other programm, then restarting to do it before win7 loads but still chkdsk cannot be done “chkdsk cannot run because the volume is in use by another process” and something about make a restore cos some previous installation software uses the c..
September 30th, 2009 at 10:55 am
I’ve read that this chkdsk problem could be linked to Avira.
I use Avira Premium.
@Georges Kant :
I’ve tried to use a third party Partition Manager (Paragon 10): no success.
Even resizing a data (no boot) partition was modifying something so that Win7 could no boot anymore.
I had to use the partition manager included in Win7.
October 7th, 2009 at 9:47 pm
i have the same issue, and it started after i installed avira (on two difference pc’s). i uninstalled avira but the issue is still there… any solution yet??
October 25th, 2009 at 6:04 am
Just upgraded to Windows 7… got this issue right now… none of the solutions I’ve found seem to work… anyone got any idea???
November 2nd, 2009 at 2:36 pm
had wins 7 awek and had chk disk problem 3 times
November 3rd, 2009 at 7:30 pm
Been on the phone to microsoft support today for ages, luckerly they rang me back, no fix im afraid they didnt seem to have a clue, I asked them to advise microsoft high ups about the check disk bug, guess i will not hold my breath…….
November 9th, 2009 at 5:24 pm
Same problem apeared 3 weeks after the windows 7 installation… I have installed avira too. Sometimes checkdisk does not even start after the countdown, sometimes but rarely windows start up normaly.
November 10th, 2009 at 10:38 am
We have two identical Dell Xeon Machines with Windows 7 64-Bit offical release. On one we have the chkdisk problem and on the other there’s no problem. So it seems to be a hardware independent bug.
November 11th, 2009 at 6:35 pm
I have Avira (Personal) with Windows 7 64-bit, & also have the chkdsk problem. Chkdsk results: no problem, file system fine; hard disk is fine. In Event Manager, I get the following error frequently:
ntfs Event ID: 55 ; type: (2) . I’ve recently enabled XP Mode, if that has any relevance. (It does require enabling ‘Virtualization’ in BIOS).
November 13th, 2009 at 6:55 pm
I have a brand new machine with a fresh install of Win7 and I keep on getting this error. Why would they release with this error?
November 13th, 2009 at 8:00 pm
I upgraded to 64-bit Windows 7 ten days ago and this problem appeared two days later and will not go away. I’m speaking to Microsoft but they are telling me to disable CHKDSK. Shouldn’t they be finding out why my disc is being marked as dirty in the first place when there is nothing wrong with it?
November 15th, 2009 at 11:32 am
I have a 4 week old OEM install of official release Win7×64 on an i5 with WD 500GB Green Power HDD.
CHKDSK ran on boot today for the 1st time ever.
I do not have Avira.
It may be co-incidence, but over past few days I’ve been looking into options for software RAID 0 using built in disk management tools in Win 7. I ran disk management to ensure my Home Premium version had the option to convert a basic volume into a dynamic volume. Note: I DID NOT actually change any settings – I just wanted to check that the menu option was there before buying a second HDD (because I had read on a couple of sites that the option was disabled in Home Premium).
This was my first reboot since running the disk management tool. Could there be a link?
November 16th, 2009 at 1:05 pm
I never had the problem until I, wait for it, installed Avira Premium. Hmmmm!
November 20th, 2009 at 7:07 am
Have that problem, no dirty bits found. What can I do?
November 20th, 2009 at 1:06 pm
I’ve added an activity that shows me a message when the event 55 occours. While I’m using MS Word 2007 I’ve noticed that the event 55 occours every time Word autosave. I’m trying to disable the autosave function… but this is annoying me ’cause I need it.
November 30th, 2009 at 2:19 pm
This issue has been confirmed by Avira, and a hotfix will roll out in a short time.
Word 2007+ Avira + Windows7 is the cause, may be also apply to some other antivirus software.
find detail here,
http://techblog.avira.com/2009/11/26/chkdsk-in-windows-7/en/
December 23rd, 2009 at 8:39 am
Yes this happens to me to and i am very irritatd with the blem pls help if there is anything.
thnx
December 30th, 2009 at 2:00 pm
I have been seeing this on Win7 RTM for a couple months now. Rather annoying.
January 24th, 2010 at 8:39 am
My son’s PC (XP home MCE) crashed and I took this opprtunity to upgrade to Win 7 (final&official).
Because of MCE, the upgrade is a clean install. At first and second reboot I got the checkdisk so I decided to reïnstall win 7.
I removed the partition and created 2 new partitions (using Win7 setup) resulting in a (very) clean install….
This machine is basically still running only Win7, Foxit-PDF-reader and a virus scanner.
NOTE: I first had AVG(free) and had the checkdisk problem, now I’m running Avira and still have that checkdisk problem.
I have the latest versions of both Win 7 and Avira (including updates). See also: http://techblog.avira.com/2009/12/07/chkdsk-issue-with-windows-7-fixed/en/
Checkdisk still runs every few boots.
It is very annoying…
January 24th, 2010 at 10:52 am
UPDATE:
In my search I came across this page:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/975778
This problem is more likely to occur on computers that have infrared devices equipped.
I had a bluetooth mouse and a IR keyboard installed. I replaced them for a PS/2 keyb and a USB mouse… I have done several reboots because of installing applications…
I haven’t had a CHKDSK yet *KOW*
October 5th, 2010 at 7:03 pm
This one really does fix it:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/982927